LINGUIST List 9.444

Tue Mar 24 1998

Qs: OCR, New words, Phonology references

Editor for this issue: Brett Churchill <brettlinguistlist.org>

We'd like to remind readers that the responses to queries are usually
best posted to the individual asking the question. That individual is
then strongly encouraged to post a summary to the list. This policy was
instituted to help control the huge volume of mail on LINGUIST; so we
would appreciate your cooperating with it whenever it seems appropriate.

Dear Linguists,
Does anyone know of *new* words which have arisen to differentiate an animal
on the basis of whether it is female or male, after the introduction of the
animal to a group of people for whom the animals come to play a particular
function? For example, ostriches are being raised particularly for their
meat, feathers, etc., but in some cases, they are being adopted for a
guard-dog type of role, such as guarding animals in an enclosure or simply
guarding an area from intruders. I am currently trying to find out if new
words for ostriches are being used by contacting people in the business.
However, I thought that perhaps some of you might be aware of other similar
situations or of real cases of emergence of such new words. This question
speaks to the issue of transfer of content of thought to language. Please
respond directly to me at ishawbadlands.nodak.edu. Thank you very much. I
will post a summary of responses.
Ines Shaw

I'm an undergraduate at Leiden University working on a minor thesis about
sound change. My current goal is to write a survey about some aspects of
this field: I'm especially interested in the way various theories handle
the sound law/analogy dualism (if this may sound obscure to you, I'm
refering to the phenomenon that sound shifts tend to disrupt existing
paradigms whereas analogy tends to restore them). I have read some
literature concerning the Neogrammarian approach, the Structuralist
approach as well as early rule-based generative approaches, and would like
some advise on a) current generative literature (especially OT), b) other
approaches than the ones already mentioned.
TIA!
Homme A. Piest.
- ---
User ID: "Homme A. Piest <piestpobox.leidenuniv.nl>"
PGP RSA Key ID: B0047F35; Size: 1024; Date: 1996/05/20
PGP DH/DSS Key ID: E2448E57; Size: 1024; Date: 1997/12/04
"Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus."